{"id":1961,"date":"2015-05-19T17:00:57","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T17:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/evoo\/"},"modified":"2021-01-21T06:31:38","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T06:31:38","slug":"evoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/evoo\/","title":{"rendered":"Olive oil mislabeling: Are consumers catching on? – National Consumers League"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"The food marketplace has come a long way in the past century. Before Upton Sinclair wrote \u201cThe Jungle,\u201d consumers used to unknowingly eat rats and human body parts in their ground beef. Today, consumers assume they can walk into a grocery store and buy that is both safe and properly labeled. But this assumption is frequently wrong–NCL recently discovered that to be the case with many brands of “extra virgin olive oil.”<\/p>\n

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The National Consumers League has advocated for consumer rights since 1899, long before Sinclair\u2019s famous novel, exposing green beans dyed green at the 1904 World\u2019s Fair. In the past decade, the League has investigated the term \u201cfresh\u201d used on canned tomatoes, tested bottles labeled \u201c100% real lemon juice\u201d which proved to be far short of 100% lemon juice and brought lawsuits against several bakeries and national restaurant chains for using misleading labeling, suggesting their white bread products were whole grain. With word of rampant olive oil mislabeling on the rise, as reflected in another book, Tom Mueller’s Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, <\/em>NCL staff decided to go shopping and investigate what exactly a consumer might get when he or she takes home \u201cextra virgin\u201d olive oil.<\/p>\n

NCL purchased 11 different varieties of olive oil, all labeled extra virgin, each bought in January 2015, from four major Washington, DC area retailers (Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe\u2019s, Safeway, and Giant). One bottle of each product was tested, so this was not meant to be a “study” or a “buyer’s guide,” but rather off-the-shelf testing as to what a consumer might buy within a year. This was an independent sampling, which NCL paid out-of-pocket, that included a battery of chemical and sensory tests that are not inexpensive. Bottles were selected from the back of lower shelves to ensure they were not damaged by exposure to natural or artificial lighting. U.S. and European brands and oils were tested, including private label oils. NCL did not test all brands that a consumer might buy.<\/p>\n

Of the 11 products tested, six failed to meet extra virgin olive oil standards as set by the International Olive Council (IOC).\u00a0 Five were found to be extra virgin olive oils. These are:<\/p>\n